Prospectus of the Scots New Zealand Land Company

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CONTENTS
The object of the Scots New Zealand Land Company, is to lay out the Capital of the Shareholders to the greatest advantage, in transporting them, their families, and friends, to New Zealand, and in purchasing Land and other Property, and to obtain Protection and other Social Advantages.
At a Meeting of intending Shareholders, held at Perth, on the 24th of August 1839, Patrick Matthew in the Chair, the following Prospectus of the Scots New Zealand Land Company, moved by William Gorrie, and seconded by William Taylor, was unanimously agreed to, and ordered to be published, the principal portion of the same having previously been examined and approved of by intending Shareholders in various parts of Scotland.
1st , Because a new country, free of debt and ancient encumbrances, with a plentiful supply of virgin soil at a low price, under all the advantages of modern science and art, affords a superior field for human industry, higher wages for labour, and greater returns upon capital, and also more healthful occupation, than an old densely-peopled country, where all the land is already appropriated, cultivated, and high-priced,—where capital is rendered comparatively unproductive, science in a great degree unavailing, and industry is crushed to the earth by a load of public debt, and where a great portion of the population follow unwholesome occupations, shut up from the fresh air of heaven.
2d , Because, in a new country, free of slavery, almost every man is a holder of property,—deriving an income at the same time from property and from labour, a state of things propitious to liberty, and where a family of children is of the utmost value in assisting their parents (the happiest condition of human existence, alike favourable to the development of mind and body, and increase of population); whereas in an old country, at least in Britain, the many are entirely dependent for support upon labour-hire alone, and a family in too many cases the entailment of misery and starvation.